Recently I’ve been exploring the concept of Mappō, the Latter Age of Degeneration. To that end I’ve read the first part of Jan Nattier’s “Once Upon A Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline,” which details the history and sources of the idea that the Buddha’s teaching decline after his Parinirvāṇa. That led me to re-read Nichiren’s Senji Shō, Selecting the Right Time: A Tract by Nichiren, the Buddha’s Disciple.”

It was while I was reading Nichiren’s letter that I noticed this:

Moreover, Tripitaka Master Pu-k’ung’s works have many mistakes. Calling the Buddha who was revealed in the 16th chapter of the Lotus Sutra, The Duration of the Life of the Tathāgata, the Buddha of Infinite Life, as he does in his Esoteric Rites Based on the Lotus Sutra, was apparently a blunder. It is not worthy of discussion that he mixed up the arrangement of the chapters in the Lotus Sutra by placing the 26th chapter, Dhārāṇis, next to the 21st chapter, The Supernatural Powers of the Tathāgata, and moving the 22nd chapter, Transmission, to the ends.

When I last read this letter in 2018, I missed the significance of Pu-k’ung’s variation in the order of the Lotus Sutra chapters. Nichiren, of course, considered Kumārajīva’s fifth-century Chinese translation of the original Sanskrit to be the most accurate translation. (See this story about Kumārajīva’s tongue.)

Pu-k’ung, however, is using the same order found by Jan Hendrik Kern, who published the first English-language translation of the Lotus Sutra in 1884. Kern’s translation was based upon a Nepalese Sanskrit manuscript written on palm leaves and dated 1039 CE. (See this chart on the organizational differences.)

The glossary in the back of Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, has this to say about Pu-k’ung:

Pu-k’ung, Tripitaka Master (Fukū)
Also known as Amoghavajra, 705-774 CE. The sixth patriarch of the Shingon sect. Born in northern India, Pu-k’ung came to China at the age of thirteen and entered the Buddhist order under the guidance of Vajrabodhi studying esoteric Buddhism. After Vajrabodhi’s death, he visited India and returned with twelve hundred fascicles of sutras and discourses. He was trusted by the three reigning Emperors: Hsüan-tsung of the T’ang dynasty and two successors, who established esoteric Buddhism as the state religion. He translated sutras such as Hannyarishu-kyō, Heart and Perfection of Naya Wisdom Sutra and Bodaishin-ron, Treatise on Bhodi-Mind. Pointing out his mistakes in the Bodaishin-ron and failure in praying for rain, Nichiren condemned him for slandering the True Dharma.

What this suggests is that the order of the sutra Kern found in a 1039 CE text was actually the order used in India centuries earlier.

The following three Chinese translations exist today.

1. Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the True Dharma – 286 CE, translated by Dharmarakṣa, (born in the 230’s CE, died at age 78.), Ten volumes, 27 chapters.
2. Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma – 406 CE, translated by Kumārajīva (344-413 CE or 350-409 CE), Seven volumes, 27 chapters. Later enlarged edition consists of eight volumes, 28 chapters.
3. Appended Sūtra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma – 601 CE, translated by Jñānagupta, (523-605 CE) and Dharmagupta (d. 619 CE), Seven volumes, 27 chapters.

Interestingly, an English translator of the Tibetan translation of the Lotus Sutra, says:

The Tibetan version matches in content the version translated into Chinese by Jñānagupta and Dharmagupta in 601–02, and also matches the Nepalese Sanskrit manuscripts.

So the alternate order of the chapters was present as far back as 601 CE.